The Service Desk plays an important role in IT Services. It is very often the first contact end users have in their use of IT Services when IT facility does not work as expected. The Service Desk is a single point of contact for end users who need help. Without this, an IT Service Provider could certainly face losses in the market due to inefficiencies.
There are different types of Service Desk, the selection of which is dependant upon what the business requires. Some Service Desks provide a simple call logging function, and escalate calls to more experienced and trained staff. Others provide a high degree of business and technical knowledge with the ability to solve most incidents at the time that the end user reports them.
Service Desk Activities
Service Desk tends to embrace the following: receive all calls and e-mails on incidents; incident recording; incident prioritization, classification and escalation; search for a 'work around'; update the end user on progress; handle communication for other ITIL processes; report to management, process managers and customers on service desk performance.
Service Desk and IT Security
As the Service Desk is generally the first contact an end user has when reporting something out of the ordinary, the skill and assiduity of the Service Desk staff can often prevent recurrence of incidents, and instigate measures that will limit the impact of any breaches in IT Security.
